Iran’s Top Commander: US Puts at Risk Regional Bases by Sanctioning IRGC

Chief of Staff of Iran’s Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Hossein Baqeri warned that enlisting the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) as a terror organization and imposing sanctions against it will endanger the US bases in the region.

“Putting the IRGC in one single class with the terrorist groups and imposing similar sanctions against the IRGC poses a major risk to the US, its bases and forces deployed in the region,” General Baqeri said, addressing an IRGC commanders’ forum in the Northeastern city of Mashhad on Monday.

He also referred to the US senate’s sanctions against Iran’s missile program, and said, “The Islamic Republic of Iran’s missile power is defensive and is never negotiable at any level.”

Elsewhere, General Baqeri pointed to the Iraqi Kurdistan region’s bid for holding a referendum on independence, and said, “This is not acceptable to the neighbors of Iraq at all.”

He said that safeguarding Iraq’s independence and integrity benefits all ethnic groups, religions and different parts of the Arab country.

In relevant remarks late in June, General Baqeri underlined that the new sanctions approved by the US Senate against Iran are in flagrant violation of the 2015 nuclear agreement reached between Tehran and Group 5+1 (the US, Russia, China, France and Britain plus Germany).

“The US Senate’s new sanctions violate the letter and spirit of the nuclear deal,” General Baqeri said.

He warned of Iran’s countermeasures, and said, “… we will file a complaint and exert pressure (on the US),” he added.

So far, Washington has slapped two rounds of sanctions on Iran under the new US administration over the country’s missile work.

The Senate’s recent vote was “commended” by the pro-Tel Aviv American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which failed to sabotage the accord when it was in the making during the administration of the former US president Barack Obama.